Young, Mahonri S[harp]

Date born: 1911

Place born: New York, NY

Date died: 1996

Place died: Bridgehampton, Long Island, NY

Americanist and Director of the Columbus Gallery of Art, 1953-1976.  Young was born to the sculptor Mahonri Mackintosh Young (1877-1957) and Cecilia Sharp (Young), a pianist.  His father was a son of the Church of Latter Day Saints ("Mormon") organizer Brigham Young (1801-1877).  The younger Young studied for a year at the Sorbonne before attending Dartmouth College.  He graduated an A.B. in 1932 and the same year married Elizabeth Chamberlain. After a divorce and remarriage  in 1940 to Rhoda Satterthwaite, he joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, in New York as an instructor in history of art in 1941 and began graduate work in New York University.  There he translated a text by one of the group of art historians who had fled Nazi Germany, Walter Friedlaender (q.v.).  With the entrance of the United States in World War II the same year, he joined the Army Air Force in 1942, discharged in 1946. He returned to New York University receiving an M.A. in 1951. Young left Sara Lawrence in 1950 and secured a position as acting director of the community arts program at Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, NY in 1951.  In 1953 he became director of the Columbus Gallery of Fine Art (modern Columbus Museum of Art) in Ohio. During this time Young wrote as the North American correspondent of Apollo magazine.  During his tenure at Columbus he who completed the Ross Wing addition for temporary exhibits at the museum. He retired from the Museum in 1976.  He died of cancer at his home at age 84.

Young’s research interest included the history of collections.

Home Country: United States

Sources: [obituaries:] "Mahonri Young, 84, An Art Historian." New York Times, July 7, 1996, p. 22; “Mahonri Young Dies, Once led Art Museum.” Columbus Dispatch June 19, 1996, p. 11H.

Bibliography:translated, Friedlaender, Walter F. The Anti-manneristic Style Around 1590 and its Relation to the Supernatural. sl: sn,  1941; The Eight: the Realist Revolt in American Painting.   New York: Watson-Guptill, 1973; Early American Moderns: Painters of the Stieglitz Group.  New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1974; The Golden Eye. New York: Scala Books/Harper & Row, 1983.